The present invention relates to a navigation device and, more particularly, to a navigation device that can present information corresponding to a travel course stage of a vehicle.
There has been known navigation devices that control presentation of information according to a travel course stage of a vehicle, such as a first stage, a middle stage, and a last stage, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-227968. Such navigation devices automatically establish the “first stage”, the “middle stage”, and the “last stage” between a departure point and a destination point on a guidance route set by a driver, and also automatically establish many rest points in the “middle stage” or the “last stage” in which driver's fatigue reaches a higher level, thereby indicating information about these rest points to the driver.
There are also demands from users that a type or frequency of information presented to the driver from a display or a speaker of the navigation device is changed depending on the “first stage”, the “middle stage”, and the “last stage” so that information useful for the driver of each stage can be provided at an appropriate frequency. For example, in the “first stage” in which road guidance is not so necessary, general information such as traffic and sightseeing information covering a wide area is desirably preferentially presented rather than guidance information of the area to which each branch road leads. In the “middle stage”, geographical names of places of relatively large areas that are expected to be generally well known are desirably presented as the name of a destination of the road on which the vehicle is running and as the geographical name of the area to which each branch road leads. In the “last stage”, more detailed guidance information of the names of places or facility spots around a current position is desirably presented.